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Cavafy's 'The City' with my view


 

How many of you have heard this statement? You can go to far-off lands, away from the city you had grown up in and yet you cannot take that city from you. It will traverse mountains and seas and be part of you. You cannot see it. No, it is invisible and intangible. ofcourse!  It is not something you can pack and tuck in your trunk with your clothes. It is not something that will move around with other trunks in the baggage carousel. You cannot feel it coming to you, with you, as a company in your trails, but it is there, nicely ingrained in your soul.

With an aim to give you a little brief, I will move on to our first poem in our poetic saga series ‘The city’ by one of the most acclaimed and revered poet. The poet being ‘C. P. Cavafy’.

The City is one of the established works of Cavafy. The 16 lines in this poem can be split into two parts. The first stanza houses the thought of the speaker in his own words and the second stanza houses the thought of the poet. In first eight lines, poet comes across as a matter of fact, direct person with his unnaturally bold and to the point expression when he starts off with “You said”

You said, “I will go to another land, I will go to another sea”. Let’s make a note that poet is uttering direct speech here, stating it with quotes. Here he is not reporting it to us as an observer of the speech but he is stating as it is. The words spoken by someone and the words stated by someone who observed that speech, makes a lot of difference. Lot of chances for the latter to dilute, craft and lace it with their own choice of words but the former attaches no filter when he executes it.

He goes on, “Wherever I turn my eyes, I see black ruins of my life here”

The speaker is definitely not in a happy mood. He has constant worry writ large on his forehead and everything that turns out, he has his city to blame. That bothers and he suffers with that thought which makes him look out for another land which might turn out better than this as he quotes “another city will be found, a better one than this”

Now the poet becomes impatient, shuns the voice of the speaker and with an imperative tone marches off in the second stanza.

“You will find no new lands, you will find no other seas.

The city will follow you. You will roam the same streets. And you will age in the same neighbourhoods”

The city is the place formed by a set of people. The civilization is created by group of people having same mindset and purpose. The poet tells the speaker that his search is futile as no matter where he goes, the city that he has grown up in, will follow him and live in his choices, taste and social elements. The people he would meet will be the extension of his own personality so he will end up with the same kind of community and try to fit into a herd that his perspective allows him to. He would choose and hobnob with the people sharing his own tastes, approach and outlook. That setting him up to obtain a same version of his old neighbourhood.

The finishing statements are even more direct that the ones above as poet is emphasizing the fact that he will not see a change and destroy that city too with his own perceptions and mentality. To see a change in the world, he needs to change his lenses too. He cannot aspire for the rainbows by doing nothing. It is not city’s fault that he sees the black ruins of his life but he himself is the one to blame. He has to own up for his actions. Just changing the place and finding a sense of belonging to a city, will not solve any of his problems. By changing places, you are just revisiting the archives of your own city with its memories, history and myriad stories.

Change comes from within and not from moving locations or chasing new culture. This also carries the fact that “What we intent, so we will realise” as our worldviews are designed and fabricated by the person we are developed into.

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